SMILE The rise, fall, and resurrection of Brian Wilson

This suspenseful nonfiction whodunit from bestseller Wallace (The Billionaire's Vinegar) sets out to discover the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin. Nakamoto first appeared on "an obscure, moderated email list about cryptography" on Halloween 2008 with an idea for a "peer-to-peer electronic cash system," only to vanish in 2011; his silence and anonymity have since given him "the halo of legend." Written with the intrigue of a detective story, the narrative follows Wallace's pursuit as he picks through Nakamoto's limited archive for identifying evidence as minor as double spaces between sentences and "Anglo spellings like 'colour.' " These clues lead Wallace to a 1990s group called the "cypherpunks" and to those involved with Bitcoin's conceptual predecessors ("b-money" and "bit gold"). Though he's doggedly persistent, from learning how to code to embarking on a 37-hour journey "for a three-minute encounter," the investigation gets mired in the inconsistencies of the stories told to him by the many colorful, sometimes scheming figures he encounters. While Wallace floats some theories about the person (or group) behind Nakamoto, he offers no definitive conclusions. Instead, he wraps up by reflecting on how the shadowy "cloud" surrounding Bitcoin transformed it from its idealistic, almost utopian beginnings into "mainly... an asset for speculation and wealth storage." Readers will find this a captivating window into the libertarian political thought and eccentric personalities behind cryptocurrency's rise. (Mar.)